The Birth of Evil
by S. Kent
Summary: A stort story detailing the life of Noein before and as he became Noein. This is my first attempt at FanFic, so constructive critisism is more than welcome but please be kind :


**The Birth of Evil**

A bloodied hand print. That is my most prominent memory. Even after all these thousands of years, it is that which stands out most in my mind. It has become an icon. A symbol of all that is wrong with existence. It is the driving force behind everything that I do, think and feel. A bloodied hand print. The hand print of the one who I loved most in the whole mulitiverse.

That day started out as one of the most beautiful days of my young life. A gorgeous summer morning filled with excitement and anticipation as I finally arrived back home in Hakodate. Just the thought of seeing Haruka again was enough to set a flock of birds free in my chest. By the time Miss Yukie's car pulled up in front of the main terminal at Hakodate Airport, I was just about ready to explode. Then all of a sudden there she was. As she gracefully exited the back seat and straightened up, I finally got to see in the flesh, the change time had wrought upon her. Beautiful is a pale, useless word when attempting to describe the creature before me. What had become of the cute, skinny girl I had spent all those years with before I left for Tokyo? She had been replaced with a tall slender beauty with long black hair, smooth creamy skin and a face of angelic proportions. As she stood there looking at the ground shyly with a pink blush spreading across her cheeks I was utterly incapacitated. I could neither open my mouth or move towards her. I was mesmerized.

"Dude!" yelled Isami as he bounded over and clapped me on the back, "Long time no see!".

Suddenly time started again and I was snapped back to reality.

"Hey Isami," I replied, "Sure has been. How are you, man?"

"Great, as always."

"Hi Yuu! Look who's here!" yelled Ai as she grabbed Haruka and dragged her over.

"Oh, c'mon Ai. Don't embarrass them," said Isami, "Look at Haruka's face, it's bright red."

"It is not!" cried Haruka as her hands flew to her cheeks.

"Hi Haruka," I said as she stood before me.

"Hi Yuu, how was Tokyo?" she replied.

"It was fine. Boring really. All I did there was study. One of the worlds greatest metropolises just outside my door and there was I locked indoors twenty four hours a day with my nose in a book."

"It's great to see you again. It's been so long. We've all really missed you."

"Some more than others," said Ai whilst she gently elbowed Haruka. Haruka's blush deepened.

"Good to see you again Yuu!" yelled Miss Yukie as she leaned out the driver's side window. "I hate to break up this heart warming reunion, but do you guys wanna get in the car? I'm in a no standing zone!"

"Oh, sure. Sorry." I mumbled as we all made our way over to the car. Isami grabbed my other suitcase and slung his arm around my shoulders as we walked over.

"Seriously dude, you've got no idea. Haruka's been like a hyperactive kid for days now," he whispered.

I smiled as we reached the car and Isami and I piled my bags in the boot of Miss Yukie's yellow hatchback. As we all went to get in the car, Isami being the clueless dolt that he is, jumped in the back after Ai leaving me and Haruka to be separated.

"Do you want the front?" asked Haruka.

"Sure," I answered, making the biggest mistake of my entire life.

Once we were all in the car, Miss Yukie sped out of the parking lot and got onto the Esan National Highway to get back into town.

"You've all grown up so much," said Miss Yukie as she watched the road.

"Of course we have. We're seventeen now," answered Isami.

"Has it really been five years since you graduated?" she asked in reply.

"Miss Yukie, in five years you haven't changed one bit," I said.

"Ha! Thanks a lot! I see you've also learned the art of kissing up."

"Dude. We're packed in kinda tight back here," said Isami.

"Well I guess you should have put a little more thought into it then," Ai said to him.

"Who me?" answered Isami.

"Yeah you. He hasn't been back from Tokyo in a really long time. You could have let him sit next to Haruka then you'd have the front seat."

"Hey knock it off guys," I told them, twisting around in time to see Haruka turn a bright shade of red.

"Great, now I feel like a real jerk," said Isami as he leaned into the front, "Hey Miss Yukie, step on it. We'll be there in no time the way you drive."

"Hey, you know what? We're going fast enough," she replied as we skidded around a bend in the road, everyone giggling with the thrill of Miss Yukie's crazy driving.

"It's too bad Miho couldn't make it," said Ai.

"She had a wedding to attend, By the way, what... are... we... getting... at... the... store?..." said Isami, his words stretching into infinity as time slowed to a crawl. From the corner of my eye I could see Miss Yukie's stricken face as the semi-trailer careened into our path. Not that there was anything she could do besides watch as the truck filled the bend in the road which lay just ahead of us. Then, CRASH! Just as the seconds before the two vehicles collided seemed to take an eternity, the impact itself was like a single frame in a film, over in the blink of an eye.

The next thing I knew I was opening my eyes to see the bitumen just millimeters from my face, red blood seeping across my vision. As my eyes began to focus, I lifted my head from the surface of the road and tried to remember where I was. As I found the car in my field of vision it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Haruka.

"Yuu, please. Yuu, help me."

Whether I heard it or imagined it is irrelevant. In my heart, I could feel her calling for me, just as I was calling for her.

"Haruka!"

And then there it was. Her small white hand reaching up from the back seat covered in blood, her palm pressing against the window. That one moment in time, forever etched in my memory like a seal stamped in wax.

Then it was all over. My life. My dreams. Everything I ever wished for. All gone in ferocious explosion of heat and flames. The screams of my friends forever reverberating through my mind. The only people in the world who meant anything to me and the woman I loved destroyed like kindling in a blaze. How is anybody ever supposed to recover from something like that. Answer me that? If you had known her like I did you too would be an empty shell of a man. Not that I qualify as a man anymore.

After that harrowing day, I gave up. I turned my back on life. I couldn't return to Tokyo. I couldn't leave the one place in the world where my beloved had last been. I moved back into my parents' house and spent my days either sitting by Haruka's grave or, when Haruka's mother would allow it, sitting in Haruka's bedroom. Lying on her bed, handling her knick-knacks, smelling her clothes until even they lost the last trace of her scent. I remained in that state for the next 8 months until the Magic Circle Project initiated it's experiment in Hakodate Bay.

Once again, that day started beautifully. A clear spring day, full of promise. For everyone except me of course. The beauty of the day was completely lost on me as I trudged that familiar path from my parents house up to the cemetery. As always I spent the day sitting there next to Haruka's grave, sometimes crying, sometimes just sitting there staring blankly out into the bay. Looking back, I believe that if it wasn't for the events of that fateful day I would not have lasted much longer in that world. I was barely eating by that point, hardly washing and never interacting with anyone besides a non-existent young woman. So I have the Magic Circle Project to thank really, for my renewed vigor and purpose in life. The moment it occurred it was like God had reached down from heaven and put a stop to all that was going on below. As if it somehow displeased him that humanity had the audacity to reach such a advanced level and needed to be punished for their arrogance.

To me, it was as if the outside world had finally decided to reflect my inside torment. As I sat there and watched the Ourobouros rise up to the heavens and time stop all around me, I knew that this was meant to be. If Haruka was gone from this world then time ought to stop to ticking and the world ought to stop turning. A perpetual twilight seemed an appropriate state for the world to be in if Haruka was missing from it. And as the people started to riot and the cities began to burn, I sat there next to my beloved and watched it all come down around us.

Those first few years were the darkest. For the residents of Hakodate it was actually a huge blessing, being at the epicenter of the revolution. At least our city was spared most of the carnage of what became known as the "Quantum Apocalypse". If there was a way to put the world to rights, then considering Hakodate was where the Magic Circle was originally activated, surely the answer lay here also. So as the entire half of the world that was left in darkness when the world stopped slowly perished and the other half burnt to the ground as the people fought over the few remaining resources, what was left of civilisation converged on this small Japanese city and focused all their remaining scientific capabilities and reserves on creating a way out. Hence, the discovery of Reizu. With this revelation came the construction of the Reizu Simulator. Our universes last attempt to stabilise itself by creating an independent, artificial observer. It didn't work. Whilst it halted the erosion of our dimension it didn't restart out timeline or correct the entropic spin of our quanta. In effect, we were still dying, just at a slower rate.

By this point I had been on the Leadership Council of the Reizu Social Order for several years and I was about to run for Chairman. I had long since realised that it was up to me to lead the remnants of humanity into the future and it was only I who had the foresight to take us into the next stage of our evolution. Of course by then all humans had, had a quantum transformation on a macro level and had been connected to the Reizu Simulator. The next step I envisioned was for people to become fully quantized, creating a world of disembodied intelligences, unshackled from their meat bodies and free to roam the multiverse without the use of umbilicals and pipelines, free to cross the dimensional void at will. Free from the pain that plagued them since the first Ourobouros rose and the Quantum Revolution began. But not me. I still needed physical existence for what I had planned. All I had to do was succeed in my bid for the leadership and then I could convince the Council that the time of assembly was all we needed to free ourselves from the pain of our existence.

There was a problem of course. There was another councilor who had figured out where my plans were going to take us and was trying to convince the rest of the Council that the time of assembly would lead to great suffering for the rest of the multiverse and would bring an end to existence as we knew it. She was right of course, but that was the whole point, wasn't it. Her name was Miho Mukai. Amazingly during the Quantum Revolution Miho's family's wealth and connections had managed to protect her and keep her alive until this day. Her parents hadn't been so lucky, but at least their fortune had been of some use in the end. And there she was. Councilor Mukai, sitting directly across the round "O" shaped Council table from me. Staring me down, daring me to try and usurp power. This just wouldn't stand. As much as I still held on to a lingering affection for Miho, considering she was the last tie I had left to my old life in Hakodate with Haruka and the others, I couldn't let her destroy my plans for a Utopia of such magnificent proportions. No, she wouldn't be allowed to stop me. And she didn't. Amazingly it was discovered that somewhere in Miho's past she had come into contact with a great concentration of Reizu particles and that this had left her quanta with amazing properties. Properties which, if incorporated into the Reizu Simulator, would allow us to speed up the total quantization of the population. Amazingly, she went without an argument or even a whimper. And as the glass tube she was in filled with liquid and she took her last breath I could see something in her eyes as she stared straight at me. Somehow she wasn't worried. After all the time she spent fighting me on the Council, now that her time had come, she seemed completely reassured in herself. It made little sense to me. Because now nothing whatsoever stood in my way.

And so it went that the rest of humanity was completely transformed into quantum intelligences and the time of assembly came to pass. And as the power of the Reizu Simulator grew and we began to absorb the surrounding dimensions, I decided to name this beautiful world I had created... Shangri-La. And it was good.


End file.
